Why Concord failed, from baffling Sony decisions to simple gameplay

Concord is a competent, well-made game. Or rather it was. I’m going to struggle with tense when it comes to writing about Concord, because, as of Sept. 6, the game has been shut down indefinitely, just two weeks into its existence. Will it ever come back? Firewalk Studios, which developed the game for Sony, says it’s taking Concord offline and refunding buyers while it “determine[s] the best path ahead.” But it’s difficult to envision a healthier future for a game that few people seemed to vibe with and many people actively rooted for to fail.

So many choices made in the rollout for Concord, which has reportedly been in development for at least six years, has felt baffling. Sony and Firewalk first revealed the game in early 2023, in the form of a retro-futuristic, synth-drenched teaser trailer that conveyed almost nothing about the game except its sense of style. We learned at the time that Concord would be a “new PvP multiplayer first-person shooter” when it launched in 2024, but no unique selling point was promised.

A full year later, Concord reemerged. A slick cinematic introduced the alien weirdos, silly robots, and hardened mercenaries of Firewalk’s sci-fi world. It looked kind of fun, if vaguely familiar. We also got our first look at Concord’s gameplay shortly after, which conveyed some combination of Destiny’s Crucible, Guardians of the Galaxy’s wise-cracking misfits, and Overwatch’s hero-focused mechanics. Those are three beloved properties (or they were once), yet Concord was initially met with a shrug.

Across two beta test weekends and at its late-August launch, players didn’t show up for Concord. The game’s reception made headlines for its low player counts — the PC version peaked at around 700 concurrent players, according to SteamDB, a death knell for the game. No one seemed to be interested in watching other people play Concord either, with only a small number of Twitch streamers sticking with the game post-launch day.

In theory, Concord should have appealed to an audience that wanted something original (read: not a sequel) and didn’t want the aggressive, battle pass-powered monetization tactics pervasive in many modern multiplayer games. Firewalk delivered on some level — the game plays well enough — but Concord’s core ideas simply didn’t align with how people actually play video games like Concord.

Firewalk’s most compelling twist on the formula is its hero-switching mechanics.In Concord, players are encouraged to swap between characters, known as Freegunners, when they respawn. Doing so grants the entire team a range of perks. Picking a character like the sniper Vale, for example, will buff every other team with longer weapon range. Then picking a character like fungal weirdo Lark will boost everyone’s reload speed. These crew buffs stack, making your team more effective over the course of a match.

So character switching is encouraged, which is also evident in the fact that certain Freegunners have deployable tech: Lark can drop buffing Spore Seeds, Duchess can build walls, and Daw can lay down healing pads. These deployables persist (provided the enemy team hasn’t destroyed them), even when you’ve switched to another character. A smart team can quickly stack a long list of buffs and kit out their side by tactically choosing and switching between characters, leading to some intriguing dynamics.

But these dynamics are subtle, and just a little dull, much like the rest of Concord. Worse, this system seemed contrary to how a lot of people play character-focused games, where they focus on a main or a small handful of characters and try to perfect them. Worst of all, they’re not very well explained by the game’s mealy tutorial.

The game’s mechanics lacked the kind of personality that might make up for these shortcomings. Gunplay feels solid, but there are no flashy ultimates or finishing moves to build thrilling game moments around, and matches can end in unexciting ways. Rarely in my time with the game over the past two weeks did I experience the thrill of victory in a close-quarters contest. Many games were blowouts. Most of these matches did not compel me to requeue for another round of Concord. The game’s progression system gave me a bunch of alternate color outfits and tchotchkes with which I could customize my character as I earned XP, but I found little of that cosmetic stuff compelling enough to grind to unlock.

Part of my apathy toward the game comes from its characters, most of which are pretty bland. Many don’t strongly convey their powers or roles well beyond their silhouette or the weapon they’re holding. I often found myself reviewing the character loadouts and abilities of its heroes, confused by their incoherent combinations of weapons and skills. I never really gravitated toward any of Concord’s Freegunners: some have dull, unattractive designs, some have turned me off with their samey, smarmy attitudes, and some just don’t feel all that interesting to actually play as. They also have bad, forgettable names (Daw, Lennox, 1-OFF, Vale, etc.) that don’t offer a clue about their roles or what their abilities are.

Firewalk’s artists certainly put in great effort and expense to make the world and characters of Concord interesting. The alien planets look beautiful. Menus and UI elements are sharply designed. The studio has also released numerous animated character shorts and the game has weekly cutscenes that push the story of the misfit Freegunners forward. There’s a massive amount of written lore baked into the game too; if you want to spend time soaking it up, there’s an interactive map of text-based entries that explains the planets, technology, shipping lanes, and fuel sources of Concord’s universe. I never found any of that extraneous story all that compelling so far, despite there being so much of it. Sony and Firewalk seemed to take for granted that people would show up and be interested in its characters and lore, and even in the game itself.

The lore, characters, and gameplay of Concord didn’t resonate with a broad audience. It’s a bummer to see a stab at something original just whiff completely, and for its detractors to pile onto it, when people’s livelihoods are at stake here. But having played Concord from its betas to its current state, I understand the collective shrug for the game. It didn’t do enough interesting things to take me away from Overwatch 2, a game I play almost daily, nor did it seem to differentiate itself from entrenched multiplayer games like Valorant, Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, and a dozen others. Concord’s competitors have the advantage of being free to play, which Firewalk’s game did not. But the game’s rivals also managed to stand out for many other reasons: likable characters based on familiar heroic archetypes, mature and distinct gameplay modes, gunplay and character balance honed over years of testing and feedback.

Concord couldn’t compete. It simply did not have the charisma or uniqueness of many of the games that came before it. It didn’t have a distinct enough personality, and it’s bewildering to think that former PlayStation boss Jim Ryan once boasted that it would be “a robust addition to PlayStation Studios’ portfolio.” I’m not sure what it was he saw in the game that convinced Sony it could break out, or what mismanagement went on behind the scenes that led to the final failed product.

Clearly a lot of passion and effort was put into Concord in an effort to make something new. And hopefully, Firewalk and Sony will find some way to dig the game out of its early grave. At the very least, Concord’s better ideas might inspire other games to adopt its handful of innovations — and as a lesson for other developers to not repeat the miscalculations that Sony and Firewalk made here.